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Recycled Plastics and the Problem with Perfection
Increasingly, consumers want their packaging and products to be made using recycled plastic material. This is good, but when manufacturers aim to design products that meet this demand, it’s not long before it runs headfirst into another competing consumer demand for cosmetic perfection.
“Plastics to the consumer and to the market have to look pristine, in that consumers don’t want to see any imperfections or black specks,” said Terry Gebhardt, vice president of Pak-Sher and a speaker at the Plastics Industry Association’s (PLASTICS’) upcoming Re|focus Sustainability & Recycling Summit. “Brand owners and processors often have very tight specs to meet the consumers aesthetic expectations, and if the recycled material can’t fit into that spec, they don’t want to buy recycled content.”
Small, harmless imperfections in plastic products and packaging are fairly common when using post-consumer content, but getting consumers to be okay visually seeing blemishes, or darker colored products that hide those blemishes would help to drive the use of these materials. Tackling how to accomplish this is part of what Gebhardt hopes to do at his Re|focus presentation. “This challenges us, especially in design, when it comes to these products and working with this material,” he said. “I want to get the industry to think about how to change customer perceptions.”
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